Donate to a Relevant Charity After Reading This (Ready for a Grade)

This is actually only the second story I've ever written... lol... DON'T GO EASY ON ME THOUGH. I'M TOUGH, I'M A MONSTER!

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It all began three years before.

“I’m all packed mom!” Marcus happily cried, “Now I can finally begin my quest to become the world’s greatest Pokemon Master!”

“That is most wonderful dear,” noted Marcus’s mother, “Don’t forget to call me from time to time. I’ll miss you so much.”

Marcus was your typical Pokemon trainer, starting on his typical Pokemon journey, and wearing the typical attire of a trainer, that being jeans, some sort of ridiculous vest, and a flamboyantly colored hat. However, due to the limited color palette of the GameBoy, the colors of these items could not be properly rendered and as a result his eyes and largely pixilated hair could not be expounded upon further.

Marcus’s mother began to hug Marcus tightly, so tightly that a portion of his chest failed, and one of his lungs collapsed. Marcus began to cry in pain, but, his mother, mistaking his tears for those of sadness at leaving as opposed to sadness at his internal bleeding, did not let go of him for several minutes, and even then, did not call the ambulance until she realized that he was coughing up candy colored blood which was quickly stained the carpet.

Three years of brutalizing surgeries later, Marcus was undergoing physical therapy at a local hospital. Having fallen into a coma shortly after the events described above, Marcus had only awoken five months before, and had slowly trained his body to the point where he could relieve himself without the use of a catheter. He had also been outfitted with a motorized wheelchair, following his diagnosis with an advanced form of depression, which allowed him to explore the relatively short stretches of sidewalk bordering the hospitals foreboding automatic doors. No more were Marcus’s poorly described clothing, as they had been replaced with replaced with far less fashionable hospital gowns.

Only one good thing had come out of Marcus’s coma, and that had been in the area of Pokemon. You see, Marcus had not had the opportunity to select his starter Pokemon at the time of his nearly fatal injury, and was thus left with a Chikorita. This was not the good news. The good news was that while he was comatose, one of the hospital’s residents had decided to train the thing out of boredom, and thus Marcus awoke to find himself the proud owner of a perfectly EVed, level 82 Meganium. Unfortunately, lacking the appropriate gym badges, and having not even met its trainer prior to his accident, the Meganium didn’t do a thing Marcus said. Also, it looked idiotic.

One day, while wheeling himself slowly back and forth along the fifty feet of sidewalk that was accessible to him, Marcus noted a food delivery van pulling into the hospital’s back entrance. Marcus kind of hated the hospital food, and having absolutely nothing better to do then watch Jeopardy reruns back in his hospital room, Marcus decided to go and examine the poor loser who delivered the swill.

Rounding the corner, Marcus discovered that the sidewalk did not in fact extend all the way around the building. He suddenly found himself, wheelchair and all, tumbling down a marginally steep ditch. Attempting to brace himself, he remembered that all his little muscles were still mostly atrophied, and found himself trapped uncomfortably under his wheelchair, mostly unable to move. He looked up, hoping to call out to someone, anyone, but most likely the food truck driver, for assistance, only to find that the truck was already driving away. Marcus was forced to watch as the truck pulled past him, totally ignorant too his plight. Not only was the truck ignorant too his plight, but its driver was as well, by the way. However, as the truck sped off, Marcus saw something fall off its back bumper, and land with a plop in the road.

Marcus could not imagine what kind of thing could make such a magical plop noise. Indeed, one could say he was intrigued. He vowed, that no matter how atrophied his limbs were, that he would figure out what the thing in the road was.

Marcus boldly sent out his Meganium, which, even though it didn’t like him much, decided to help him back into his wheelchair, and then helped him balance it as it slowly rolled out of the ditch and onto the road. Then it coughed up some phlegm and fell asleep. Marcus continued boldly forward, straining the motor of his wheelchair as far as it could go, until he reached the object the truck had deposited in the middle of the road. He realized, with a shock, that it was a Magikarp.

“Awesome!” Marcus would have cried in joy were his lungs not so weak, “I can capture this, and use its water typing to balance my Meganium’s weakness to fire type Pokemon.”

The Meganium coughed up some more phlegm.

“Time to battle!” cried (not really) Marcus, weakly easing a pillowcase that was padding his wheelchair into his right hand. Lacking a Pokeball besides his Meganium’s, the pillowcase would have to do to capture the bony fish.

“Meganium, use Solar Beam!” Marcus commanded, doing his best to sound authoritative as opposed to sounding like death. Meganium continued to lay there, and it seemed quite possible that it was asleep. However, Marcus realized that it was probably just charging up the attack. The Magikarp was quick to respond, flopping a bit, in what Marcus assumed was its infamous Splash attack.

“Now, release the Solar Beam!” Marcus commanded again. Meganium glanced up, and, feeling a bit bad for Marcus, released a tidbit of a beam, its energy scrounged up at the last second. The blow hit Magikarp hard (it was level 2, and had a 0 Spec Def IV), but it still seemed like it could put up one hell of a fight. It used Splash again.

“Meganium- USE YOUR MIGHTY VINE WHIP!” Marcus really did shout this time, and almost immediately he began to hyperventilate.

Meganium, noting its trainers total lack of… any positive traits in any form, decided the hell with it, and meandered over, removed the pillow case from its trainers hands and eased it over the struggling fish (it was already out of PP). Marcus, attempting to regain control of his lungs, flashed Meganium a pale smile, and managed, with great effort, to bend his hand into a thumbs up. Meganium felt pretty good about itself, as it and its trainer patiently watched the pillowcase lightly flop about. Would the Magikarp escape?

 

Introduction: “Oh, here’s another crappy satirist who thinks they’re funny… typical, typical, typical… seen that before… OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN”

Yeah. You surprised me. Doesn’t happen often. ESPECIALLY with the parodies. Usually it’s just same-old same-old. So, for the purpose of your fic, you have been freakishly successful. You might lose some readers (especially those, like me, who are quick to judge) before they realize that you’re not as average as you seem in the first few paragraphs. I almost want to warn you against this turnabout method. But by God, the shock value for the people who stick it out… Nice, very nice. You have pulled this off. It’s a dangerous technique, but you did it. Make sure that in the future, you take notice of the fact that the only reason this method works is because of the abrupt and blatant turn-around in satire type. If you try to pull it off on a piece that doesn’t have an obvious break in events, it won’t work anywhere near as well.

Also, your character and setting were properly enumerated. Baha. SO GOOD JOB THERE, TOO.

Plot: I can honestly say this is my absolute favorite Magikarp plot, out of what I’ve read. It’s fresh. Kinda smacks you in the face with its ridiculousness, as is its goal—but unlike a lot of fics that try to do this, it’s zany in a way that actually entertains me. Most of the time I just roll my eyes at poor attempts at troll-writing. “Why rummage through sub-par internet writing-trolls when I can skip the search for quality and go straight to Mark Twain?” (He’s a master troll. Just saying.) But, goodness. What a failure. XD This kid’s life is ridiculous. He can’t even capture his own Magikarp.

The procession of random accidents was, yes, a stretch. But it was intended to be a stretch, so it works. There was also a certain “method to the madness,” as the cliché goes. You managed to justify everything (ATROPHY. IT WAS ALL THE ATROPHY.) except, possibly, the mother breaking the kid’s ribs. There were a few opportunities for comedic value that could have been overlooked (ie mother visiting child in hospital), but for the most part, you “got it.” The snippets of game-based joke suited the parody well, as did the glib description. Above and beyond a Magikarp-level plot.

Grammar: You had a lot of issues, here. Nothing huge, but fairly plentiful.

1. Direct Addresses
2. Dialogue tag run-ons
3. Run-ons in general

Direct addresses are going to be the easy ones, here. When someone’s speaking, if they address another person, said person’s name needs to be offset by commas. This is because it’s a nonessential component that doesn’t directly modify anything. So, what that’ll look like is: “I’m all packed mom!” → “I’m all packed, Mom!” or “That is most wonderful dear.” → “That is most wonderful, dear.”

Note: Mom should be capitalized, there, because it’s one of those odd exception nicknames. You’re replacing her name with her “formal title.”

Your dialogue tag run-ons confuse me, a bit. Here’s what you’re doing…

But that’s wrong. When you interrupt dialogue with tags, the dialogue tag is only marked with a comma if it has interrupted mid-sentence. What you’re saying with your current grammatical construction is: “I’m all packed, Mom, Now I can finally begin my quest to become the world’s greatest Pokémon Master!” and “That is most wonderful, dear, Don’t forget to call me from time to time.” These just feel awkward.

(The first sentence could go either way, because Marcus could be a dialogue tag for the “Now I can…” sentence and not the “I’m all packed” sentence. I think you intended it to work for both, though.)

What you want this section to look like is…

If you wanted to use the construction with the commas, you could go…

SO. Remember, with your dialogue, that the tags have to end with a period unless they interrupt mid-sentence.

AND FINALLY. We have your run-on sentence issue. Some of them are actual run-ons; some of them are just unnecessarily long. As a general rule, one sentence should contain one basic idea and its modifiers. Unless you really know what you’re doing grammatically, trying for more than that is hazardous.

What you really need to watch out for are your long sentences with “and” joining clauses. Those get really awkward. Most of the time, they make two sentences better than they make one sentence. Take a look at the first section here. You have an “and wearing”… this is awkward. If you wanted to make the distinction between who he is and what he wears (which is what I gather the and was for), you would have to add different separation between those trainer and the clothes. The best thing to do would be to make them separate sentences, but that would lose the whole “typical” joke. So, if you wanted to keep the full sentence, what you would do here would be something like…

Marcus was your typical Pokémon trainer, starting on his typical Pokémon journey while wearing the typical attire of a trainer—that being jeans, some sort of ridiculous vest, and a flamboyantly colored hat.

But at the same time, I feel like you should keep the “typical” section of the clothes and break it off after the word “trainer,” to better suit your grammatical ideas. The parentheses are kindof awkward, but I think they work in this situation. Also, be very careful with be verbs ending in –ing (being, in this instance). They are never as grammatically correct as they seem.

Marcus was your typical Pokémon trainer, starting on his typical Pokémon journey while wearing the typical attire of a trainer. (That would be jeans, some sort of ridiculous vest, and a flamboyantly colored hat.)

I could do the exact same thing to the “and” after “rendered.” What you should take away from this is that most of your sentences with two independent clauses separated by and are not compatible in idea, and are awkward—which means the best way to deal with them is to split them into separate sentences.

Also.

It’s “to his plight.” You made the same mistake twice, or I wouldn’t have pointed it out… Remember too = also, to = direction/intention, two = number. XD

Details: You were awesome, here, in some aspects, and not so great in others. The aspects you did well in are the ones that matter to writing, though. You’d just get faulted by some graders for the downfalls in the areas you neglected. Your descriptions of actions are brilliant. Prudent, spicy adjectives and adverbs… nice attention to procession and flow. All-around good. However, you didn’t really get into visual description. This’d be answering questions related to What does this look like? You answered what our hero is wearing, but not what he looks like. He has a typical air, which means more than hair and eye color ever will… but at the same time, a lot of graders want a lot of specificity out of you on this matter. What I’m going to ask you for would be… What does he look like after three years of sickness? Pale, haggard? Pretty normal—just kinda wimpy and noodly? Hair dandruffy, because showering in the hospital is a bother? I’d think he’d smell funny, too. You don’t really need to answer questions like this in a Magikarp fic, but I’ll want ‘em out of you for higher level captures.

Your tools when it comes to imagery, which would be the aspect of description you lacked most, are primarily the senses. Sight is the most basic level—size, shape, and general air through detail are more important than large numbers of specifics. You can step up to sound, smell, et cetera to add additional dimension. Think about the methods as you write more.

Battle: Thank you thank you thank you. NON-CONVENTIONAL BATTLE. With a pillowcase. Not a lot of back-and-forth attacking. The Magikarp ran out of PP too quickly. I’m fine with that. This is far superior to the most strategically complicated of battles, simply because it’s original. Engagement points for you, sir. Or mademoiselle. Whatever.

Length: One post. Fwee~

Verdict: TAKE YOUR MAGIKARP. TAKE IT. This isn’t seen a lot in the URPG, and often isn’t done well. You did something on the less common side and did do it well. Even though you lacked a lot of the imagery-specific aspects of description, this is a Magikarp fic. Watch out for the run-ons, in the future. GOOD JOB.